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N0KFQ > TODAY 18.06.15 15:12l 55 Lines 2639 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 59031_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Jun 18
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Sent: 150618/1306Z 59031@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.63
1923
Checker Cab produces first taxi at Kalamazoo factory
On June 18, 1923, the first Checker Cab rolls off the line at the
Checker Cab Manufacturing Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Morris Markin, founder of Checker Cab, was born in Smolensk,
Russia, and began working when he was only 12 years old. At 19,
he immigrated to the United States and moved to Chicago, where
two uncles lived. After opening his own tailor's shop, Markin
also began running a fleet of cabs and an auto body shop, the
Markin Auto Body Corporation, in Joliet, Illinois. In 1921, after
loaning $15,000 to help a friend's struggling car manufacturing
business, the Commonwealth Motor Company, Markin absorbed
Commonwealth into his own enterprise and completely halted the
production of regular passenger cars in favor of taxis. The
result was the Checker Cab Manufacturing Company, which took its
name from a Chicago cab company that had hired Commonwealth to
produce its vehicles.
By the end of 1922, Checker was producing more than 100 units per
month in Joliet, and some 600 of the company's cabs were on the
streets of New York City. Markin went looking for a bigger
factory and settled on Kalamazoo, where the company took over
buildings previously used by the Handley-Knight Company and Dort
Body Plant car manufacturers. The first shipment of a Checker
from Kalamazoo on June 18, 1923 stood out as a major landmark in
the history of the company, which by then employed some 700
people.
During the Great Depression, Markin briefly sold Checker, but he
bought it back in 1936 and began diversifying his business by
making auto parts for other car companies. After converting its
factories to produce war materiel during World War II, Checker
entered the passenger car market in the late 1950s, with models
dubbed the Superba and the Marathon. In its peak production year
of 1962, Checker rolled out some 8,173 cars; the great majority
of those were taxis. Over the course of the 1970s, however, as
economic conditions led taxi companies to convert smaller, more
fuel-efficient standard passenger cars into cabs, the 4,000-pound
gas-guzzling Checker came to seem more and more outdated. Markin
had died in 1970, and in April 1982 his son David announced that
Checker would halt production of its famous cab that summer.
Though the company still owns the Yellow and Checker cab fleets
in Chicago and continued to make parts for other auto
manufacturers, including General Motors, the last Checker Cab
rolled off the line in Kalamazoo on July 12, 1982.
73, K.O. and Billie...
...."on the road again".
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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